NSTA Legislative Update
May 11, 2009

President Obama Submits FY2010 Budget to Congress

The FY2010 budget request for federal programs President Obama submitted to Congress last week focused on his five pillars for reforming schools and included a substantial increase in funding that would “reward principals, teachers, and other school personnel who raise student achievement.”

The Department of Education budget for FY2010 of $47.6 billion requested by the Administration is largely guided by the President’s five goals for reforming schools outlined in an earlier address last month. These include:

• Investing in early childhood education and expanding access to quality childcare.
• Challenging states to adopt world-class college- and career-ready academic standards and assessments.
• Recruiting, preparing, and rewarding effective teachers.
• Promoting innovation and excellence in America's schools by expanding charter schools, extending learning time, and turning around low-performing schools.
• Increasing the number of people pursuing higher education and earning a postsecondary degree or certificate.

In many cases the funding proposed by the President is in addition to the massive spending allocated in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), signed into law on February 17. Key highlights of the FY2010 budget include:

• $517.3 million for the Teacher Incentive Fund, a $420 million increase over the FY2009 level, to support comprehensive strategies for recruiting, preparing, and rewarding effective teachers. According to the Department of Education these funds would “encourage changes in teacher and principal compensation systems to reward principals, teachers, and other personnel who raise student achievement, close achievement gaps, and work in our most challenging schools.”

The request of $517 million includes $30 million to support the National Teacher Recruitment Campaign, a comprehensive effort by the Department, working with public and private non-profit partners, to reach out to potential candidates (including non-traditional candidates) for teaching positions, provide information on routes they can take to enter the profession, and support the development of training programs to help these candidates become qualified to teach.

• $2.9 billion for Improving Teacher Quality State Grants (Title IIA), a source of funding to help States and school districts strengthen the skills of the teaching force.
• $50 million for the Teacher Quality Partnership program, to create model teacher preparation programs and model teaching residency programs.
• $29.2 million for the School Leadership program, an increase of $10 million, to expand the number of projects that recruit and train principals and other school leaders to serve in high-poverty schools.

Many of the proposals are also specifically targeted to the middle and high school levels.

• President Obama is seeking $1.5 billion for Title I School Improvement Grants (in addition to the $3 billion allocated in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act), and requiring states to use up to 40% of their allocation for middle level and high schools. Traditionally Title I grants have gone to improvements at the elementary education level.
• The President is calling for $50 million to create a new High School Graduation Initiative, which would help local school districts reduce the number of students who drop out of high school and help those who have already dropped out reenter to complete their high school education.

Funding for new and innovative programs include:

• $100 million for the What Works and Innovation Fund, to be combined with the $650 million provided for this activity by the Recovery Act, to support competitive grants to LEAs and partnerships between non-profit organizations and LEAs that have made significant gains in improving student achievement, or have demonstrated significant improvement in other areas, to expand or evaluate their work and serve as models of best practices
• $268 million for Charter School Grants, an increase of $52 million representing the first installment on the Administration's commitment to double funding for Charter Schools over 4 years to promote successful models of school reform.
• $10 million for a Promise Neighborhoods initiative that would provide 1-year planning grants to non-profit, community-based organizations serving low-income urban neighborhoods or rural areas to help them develop plans for comprehensive programs that provide the support children need to achieve success from birth through college and beyond.

Several programs received flat funding, including the Math and Science Partnerships, which were funded at $179m in the Presidents budget. President Obama also eliminated 12 programs for a savings of $551m from the Dept. of Education, the largest being the Safe and Drug Free Schools and Communities State Grants ($294m). Also on the chopping block this year are Even Start, College Access Challenge Grant Program, Mentoring, Civic Education, Character Education, Ready to Teach, the Javits Gifted and Talented Education, National Institute for Literacy, Academies for American History and Civics, Close UP Fellowships, and Foundations for Learning program. The President also eliminated 702 earmarked projects from the Department of Education budget.

In the budget proposal the President is also seeking substantial funding for Title I Early Childhood Grants ($500m) to expand Title I preschool programs, $300m for an Early Learning Challenge Fund, $162m for Early Reading First, and $370.4 m for an expanded Striving Readers program which would provide reading intervention programs also at the middle and high school levels.

In the higher education arena the President is seeking to make the Pell Grant program a mandatory program, and to eliminate the Federal Family Education Loan program and make new loans thru direct lending, saving an estimated $21 billion over five years which could be reinvested for additional loans.

Funding for the National Science Foundation will increase by 8.55% over FY 2009 appropriations level, from $6.49 billion, to $7.045 billion. Overall funding for the research on learning in formal and informal settings division in the NSF Education and Human Resources Directorate is increased. The Math and Science Partnerships at NSF are funded at $58 million for FY2010. The president is proposing to triple the number of Graduate Research Fellowships (GRF) at NSF to 3,000 by 2013; the GRF program is the country’s pre-eminent graduate fellowship program in STEM fields. The President is also proposing a new $115m Department of Energy/NSF Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) program that will work to inspire tens of thousands of American students to pursue STEM careers, particularly in clean energy.

According to the Department of Education, “Federal funding makes up about 8.5 percent of the estimated $665 billion that America will spend on elementary and secondary education during the 2008-2009 school year. The relatively small size of the Federal investment in education dictates an emphasis on supporting promising research-based programs that have the potential to leverage more effectively the much larger state and local share of national education spending to bring about real improvement in student achievement. This is why a key goal of the 2010 request is to ‘scale up success’ by identifying and replicating successful models and strategies that raise student achievement.”

• Read more about the President’s FY2010 education proposals at www.ed.gov
• Read the Washington Post article “Budget Outlines Funding for Teacher Merit Pay Programs”

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